Yesterday sucked.  What even was the sheet of ice on the roads and the 6:45 am meeting I had an hour away? Did your day suck too? Do you need a mindless 25 minute activity to decompress and fill your tum?

Tada! Risotto.

Making risotto is too good.  You have to care the first couple times you make it but after that you can make it over and over infinity different ways while being able to check out and calm yourself after a shit day.   And at the end of a bad day what is better than what is essentially a fancy cheese/carb combo?

We made lemon risotto last night.  You could easily add spring vegetables to make this a primavera, a handful of spinach, or sundried tomatoes.  It’s DELICIOUS served solo or with a little chicken/fish.  Giada hollows out some lemons and serves the risotto in them as an appetizer (she’s so wild) and Ina forms them into a patty and makes risotto cakes (she’s so awesome).  It’s your world when it comes to risotto.

In a saucepan heat over medium low 6 cups of chicken stock (I only had 5 on hand so I added a cup of water and no on died).  Heat on medium 1.5 tablespoons butter and 1.5 tablespoons of olive oil in a large sauté pan. Saute two diced shallots in this for 6 minutes until softened.  Add two cups of Arborio rice (you can’t swap out the rice type- I’m watching you).  Toast the rice for one minute and then add 0.25 cups of DRY white wine.  Then drink this wine the remainder of making/devouring the risotto.  Stir the rice with the wine for 30 seconds and then add 1.5 cups of the warm stock.  Now the rest of this is really chill.  You just stir the risotto constantly for 25 minutes.  Every couple minutes (and every time the risotto looks like it is getting too dry) add 0.5 cups of stock.  You want the rice to be cooked but still have some bite to it.  Mushy risotto is for losers.

Okay that’s it.  Now you could flavor it however you want but we added the juice from 1.5 lemons, the zest from 2 lemons, 1 cups of freshly grated parmesan, a small handful of chopped flat leaf parsley and 1.5 tablespoons of butter . Yeah more butter.  This is why risotto tastes so good at a restaurant.  Don’t be janky just own it and add the extra butter.

So you literally just hovered over a carb pile for half an hour stirring/salivating/forgetting how much your day sucked.  Don’t feel better?